Thermographic printing

There are two types of thermographic printing, both of which rely on heat to print onto the material.

The simplest type is where the material to be printed has been coated with a substance that changes colour when heated. This variation of thermal printing is used in older model fax machines and used in most shop till receipt printers. This is called direct thermal printing.

More complex is thermal ink transfer printing that melts print off a ribbon straight onto the material to be printed.

Common uses of thermal transfer printing include:

* Barcode Labels
* Printing Plastics